Why I'm Not Excited About Samsung's New AI Caption Writing Tool Composer
Commentary: The new Composer feature wants to help you write social media captions. I'm not sure we need it.
Samsung wants you to use its new mobile AI to write your social media captions. Its new Composer feature was announced Wednesday at Samsung's Galaxy Unpacked event in Paris. But don't worry if you missed the quick mention of it -- it's hardly likely to be your new favorite AI tool.
The AI-powered feature was one of many software (and hardware) updates Samsung announced from inside the Louvre. Samsung launched its long-awaited Galaxy Ring, along with the next generation of foldable phones, the Galaxy Z Flip 6 and Galaxy Z Fold 6. New Galaxy Buds and Galaxy Watch Ultra were also released. And we got a preview of some of the software powering the new devices, including the generative AI and Galaxy AI features.
Samsung opened the event by introducing what it's calling the "next frontier of mobile AI," to nobody's surprise. Apple previewed its own version of generative AI, named Apple Intelligence, at last month's WWDC event, and it stole the show. Earlier this summer, Google's I/O event talked about AI for much of the presentation, even though it was in a pretty confusing way. So even though Samsung's Unpacked summer event is historically more hardware-focused, it would've been weird not to hear about AI.
The AI feature that caught my attention was Composer, a generative AI tool that can generate text for emails and social media captions based on basic keywords. Samsung said that Composer analyzes your previous posts to reflect your tone -- meaning that ideally, the captions it spits out would actually sound like you, not the typical humorless, human-like text that's become a telltale sign of AI.
Samsung demoed a couple of other AI use cases, like a translator and photo and video editing tools. But nothing was really groundbreaking or got me captured my attention. Maybe it's because they're not available yet -- the new foldables will be the first devices to have the new Gemini capabilities -- but I could do all of these things now with other AI programs. Meta AI is integrated into my Instagram DMs so I don't have to leave the platform for help coming up with captions, for starters.
We'll have to wait until we get our hands on these features in the new phones to really dig into comparisons, but for now, it doesn't sound like a really cutting edge AI use case. The Composer feature is one small part of what the next generation of phones will be capable of as tech giants continue to invest in AI and integrate it into devices. But so far, I'm thinking I'll keep writing my own Instagram captions -- at least until Samsung's Composer feature and other mobile AI tools prove they're going to bring something new to the table.